Malta has voted to join the European Union by 52.7 per cent to 44.7 per cent, according to early election results reported by state television.
An official result is expected late tonight.
Television Malta said the projected results were based on analysis of 11,300 votes cast around the country in yesterday's referendum in the tiny Mediterranean archipelago.
Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi of the pro-Europe Nationalist Party immediately claimed victory based on the projections.
"It will be excellent for Malta. It will wake up tomorrow morning as a member of the EU," he told reporters.
Electoral officials said 91 per cent of the electorate had voted in yesterday's referendum, the first of a series involving an estimated 50 million voters across 10 countries who are candidates to join an enlarged European Union by May 2004.
Malta has been divided over the issue of membership and the result is expected to reflect bitter division between the country's two parliamentary parties.
Prime Minister Mr Eddie Fenech-Adami predicted a victory for the Yes camp after he voted yesterday. The main opposition Labour Party leader Mr Alfred Sant, who has urged rejection of Brussels, visited the same polling station later in the day but pointedly held up his voter registration card afterwards, indicating he had abstained from voting.
Labour had called on its supporters, around half the island's electorate, to either vote no or abstain.
Long-time Eurosceptic Mr Sant has argued that Malta would lose its identity as part of an enlarged European Union. He would seek a partnership treaty with Brussels, an option which he said would allow Malta more sovereignty.
The referendum is non-binding and will have to be validated by a general election, which political commentators suggested Mr Fenech-Adami might call as early as next month, to take advantage of the momentum built up during the referendum campaign.
Almost 300,000 people, three-quarters of the population of the archipelago between Sicily and Tunisia, were eligible to vote.
AFP